Collaborative Governance in Italian Urban Food Policies: Towards an Analytical Framework for Differentiated Governance Arrangements

The introduction to the special issue outlines Collaborative Governance (CG) as a subfield of the governance literature and as an emerging framework within food policy studies. CG pays attention to the potentially transformative policymaking arrangements enabling knowledge holders and stakeholders to participate in decision-making, enhancing capacity for better outcomes, increasing legitimacy, and building trust through frequent interaction among actors. First, the introduction highlights the distinctive aspects of urban food governance. Then, drawing on the theoretical and empirical literature, it proposes an analytical framework that considers urban food-related policies to grasp different configurations of actors, (alternative) networks and stages of the evolution of urban governance arrangements. Finally, the special issue investigates a wide range of food policies and CG patterns in the Italian urban contexts.